SpaceX To Attempt Rocket Drone Ship Landing On Sunday

Trending News: Elon Musk Is Aiming For History Again With An Even Crazier SpaceX Rocket Landing

Why Is This Important?

Because the launch has been compared to vaulting a pencil over the Empire State building.

Long Story Short

SpaceX is going for another rocket landing, but this one on a moving drone ship off the coast of California. This is the first launch you'll be able to watch live on NASA TV.

Long Story

To the adoration of thousands of star-gazers and Elon Musk fanboys (Musk’s minions, as it were), SpaceX incredibly landed the main stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back on land for the first time in history on December 21. And now just a few weeks later, SpaceX is using a mission to carry a 1,100+ pound oceanography satellite up to outer space as an excuse to try something even harder.

Elon Musk stated on Twitter that all systems are go for an attempted landing on one of SpaceX’s un-crewed drone ships floating off the coast of San Pedro, California.

Aiming to launch this weekend and (hopefully) land on our droneship. Ship landings needed for high velocity missions https://t.co/n6j0mExAqM

This will be the third attempt at doing a landing on a moving target — the previous two ended in explosions and sunken rockets. However, those failures were before the successful ground landing a few weeks ago when the Falcon 9 rocket was outfitted with more space for extra fuel and 200,000 pounds more thrust.

The reason for landing the rocket is to save truck loads of money on rebuilding the most expensive part of a rocket by reusing it. Musk also hopes the Falcon 9 program will eventually help us get a city on Mars.

"It's always cool to see something that's never been done before," said Jon Goff, CEO of Altius Space Machines in Broomfield, Colo. to CBC News.

"They've shown they can navigate back to a platform. They've shown they can land it. But now the question is, can they land it on a platform that is pitching and rolling in the ocean?"

If you're not able to make it to the coast of California and keen on seeing SpaceX's latest history-making event, you're in luck. NASA TV is going to live stream it for the very first time, according to Tech Insider. Catch the 30-second action at 1:42 p.m. Eastern on Sunday.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question: Does this become a major setback for the Falcon 9 program if it fails to land on a drone ship for a third time?

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